As SATA SSDs slowly give way to M.2 SSDs, so too have the SSDs' use cases. Besides internal storage, of course, SATA SSDs have also commonly been used as both temporary and permanent external storage thanks to cheap SATA-to-USB adapters. And now that M.2 drives are rising in popularity, similiar adapters are popping up for SATA drives in the new form factor. The latest of these being SilverStone's recently launched MS10, a SATA M.2 SSD adapter that supports 10 Gbps USB transfer rates.

The SilverStone MS10 (SST-MS10C) is an aluminum enclosure measuring 104×35×11 mm and featuring a USB Type-C connector. The device is based on JMicron’s JMS580 USB 3.1 Gen 2 to SATA 6 Gbps bridge, with the use of USB 3.1 Gen 2 (10 Gbps) meaning that the adapter offers more than enough upstream bandwidth to saturate a SATA SSD. On which note, it goes without saying that due to the controller used here, the MS10 only supports SATA-type drives, and it will not work with PCIe-based drives (be it AHCI or NVMe). Meanwhile the chassis itself is appropriately spacious, as it accommodate one single-sided M.2-2242/2260/2280 drive.

The MS10 enclosure is aimed at owners of modern laptops with USB Type-C connectors. To protect the chassis, SilverStone ships it with a protective bag. The drive also sports a write-protect switch, in case it ever needs to be hooked up in a read-only fashion to avoid disturbing the data on the drive.

SilverStone’s MS10 chassis will be available in the near future. Pricing is unknown, but as a SATA-only adapter it should not be too expensive.

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Source: SilverStone (via Hermitage Akihabara)

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  • CherryBOMB - Monday, April 1, 2019 - link

    Is this capable of linking up to a current gen Ipad Pro 11 or 12? Thanks
  • bug77 - Tuesday, April 2, 2019 - link

    Easier to post on Anandtech then to look at the damn tablet, isn't it?
  • Guspaz - Wednesday, April 3, 2019 - link

    Is it not a reasonable question? The iPad Pro has a 10 gig USB-C connector, the lack of support for external USB storage is an iOS restriction that may not be obvious to users.
  • CMDMC12 - Tuesday, April 2, 2019 - link

    Ladies and gentlemen, behold the intelligence of the average Apple user.
  • LMonty - Friday, April 5, 2019 - link

    Says the below average keyboard warrior.
  • e1jones - Monday, April 1, 2019 - link

    A bit overkill for just a SATA SSD... but if the price is right....

    I've had a MyDigitalSSD M2X for a while, with a 128GB ADATA SX6000 inside. Nice performance (for an x2 PCIe), but the thing gets HOT! It's bigger & faster than the little USB thumbdrives for doing OS installs.
  • kpb321 - Monday, April 1, 2019 - link

    A 5 Gbps usb port does bottleneck a SATA SSD somewhat. After encoding and overhead 400-500 MBps is practical for USB 5 Gbps which is below what most decent SATA SSDs can sustain for sequential reads. Other things are likely to be slower and probably not bottle-necked by the USB connection. So a 10Gbps USB controller can help out the best case performance some and is not totally useless. The 20Gbps USB 3.2 ports should be really nice for good NVMe SSD drives.
  • bug77 - Tuesday, April 2, 2019 - link

    I'm not sure I'd pick this up over a good old USB stick.
  • jordanclock - Wednesday, April 3, 2019 - link

    Then you are likely not the kind of person that needs the kind of bandwidth, IOPS or access times that such a product is aimed for.
  • NewMaxx - Wednesday, April 3, 2019 - link

    The ADATA SX6000NP (as opposed to the newer Pro/Lite) is notorious for getting hot.

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